Thesis Statement

Augustine was a prolific writer, theologian, and thinker in the early Christian church. Having come from a background of philosophy and Greek thought, he was able to experience the love and pull of God as few who are raised in the church do. While Augustine’s faith contained logic and depth, he also drew upon the experience of faith. In his book Confessions, Augustine showed that by experiencing the confession of sin to God, one puts theology into practice and builds a closer relationship to the Father.

Introduction

The Confessions of Augustine was written by Augustine between 397 and 401 while serving as the bishop at Hippo Regius, a city on the North African coast.[1] In this book, Augustine provided a history of his own life from birth up to that point, and then turned his focus to other matters, including the creation of the world, time, and memory. A large portion of the book is spent on Augustine’s confession of the sins that he had struggled with and how he had pled with God to deliver him from that sin.

Unlike many theological writings, Confessions does not confine itself to heady discussions of fine points of church doctrine. Augustine focuses much of this book on his own failures and how these experiences molded him into what he became. Pilkington repeats the idea that “while in Augustin’s other works we see the philosopher or the controversialist, here we see the man”.[2]

This paper will seek to show that while Augustine wrote a great deal about the sins of his life, it was through the experience of those sins that he was able to understand the full measure of grace that God poured into his life. The honesty and candidness of Augustine about the things that he had done was not intended to glorify or give excuse to the sin, but merely to shine a light on the man himself, to keep people from putting him on a pedestal. Through Augustine’s Confessions he was able to demonstrate how one can come closer to the Father only through the repentance of one’s own sin. Someone who had not experienced the love of the Father could not make that claim.

Unless otherwise noted, all Biblical quotations in this paper will be taken from the New King James Version.

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[1] J. D. Douglas, Philip Wesley Comfort and Donald Mitchell, Who’s Who in Christian History (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1997).

[2] Philip Schaff, ed. The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol. I (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, 1997), 29. The spelling of Augustine’s name is left as it was in Pilkington’s writings.